"You look great!" Rick said. "You're not starving."
"Only for you."
"I had no idea what had happened to you," said Rick.
"They wouldn't tell me anything. I was afraid you were dead."
"I feared the same for you," said Con. "It's been horrible. I'm so lonely without you. For the first time in my life, it feels strange to sleep alone."
"How have they treated you?" asked Rick.
"They've left me alone, except to ask all sorts of questions about the time machine and stuff. The two guys act like I disgust them, but sometimes the woman's not so bad. I think she's studying me."
"Yeah, Jane's the curious one."
"Jane?"
"I gave them names," said Rick. "The two guys are Hitler and Stalin and the woman's Jane, after Jane Goodall."
"Never heard of her."
"She was a twentieth-century scientist who studied chim-panzees."
Con smiled wryly. "That's appropriate, they treat me like one. Did you know they call themselves Homo perfectusT
"Perfected Man," mused Rick. "That sounds about right."
"Perfected?" said Con disdainfully. "They look like big kids."
"And we probably look like pinheads to them. They look like kids because of neoteny."
"What?'
"It's the retarding of development so juvenile traits are retained in adulthood. It's why humans have large heads. It's why baby apes look more like humans than the adults. Our friends just took it one step further."
"And those dots?" said Con. "They can transmit infor-mation through them."
"I think they're implants. A computer with a neural inter-face. I've seen them downloading to one another."
"I have, too," said Con. "Jane complained that my 'inac-cessible mind' tired them."
"Yeah," said Rick, "talking to us drives them nuts. We must sound like the world's slowest stutterers."
"I noticed," said Con. "So yon think they have computers for brains?"
"More like a computer in their head that their brain can access," said Rick.
"It'd sure make school easy," said Con.
'Toddlers could get educated in seconds," said Rick. "It'd change the whole concept of intelligence."
"But how could that happen?"
"It had to be genetic engineering. A change like that wouldn't happen naturally. Natural selection stopped work-ing on humans long ago."
"Creating a new species of people?" said Con. "That seems impossible."
"It's not that far-fetched," said Rick. "You're souped. Joe worked on neural interfaces. Eventually, someone took it to the next level."
"But why would people want to change?"
"I doubt most did," said Rick. "New species usually start out as small, isolated populations."
"But that means there would be two kinds of people in the world and..." Con paused in alarm. "Rick!
Jane said Homo sapiens are extinct!"
Rick sighed. "That's the pattern for our genus. When was the last time you encountered a Homo neanderthalensis or a Homo erectus? They used to share the world with us."
"Jane talked about a discontinuity in the record, but I think it's more than that. She doesn't seem to understand us at all."
"People wouldn't have volunteered to become extinct."
"So you think they destroyed everything?" said Con, ap-palled by the very idea.
"When the Spanish encountered the Indian civilizations," said Rick, "they not only destroyed them, they burned all their books as well."
Con shivered. "What's going to happen to us?"
"I don't know," he said, "but I have one hopeful theory. They asked me a lot of questions about my plans after our trip. Did they do the same to you?"
"Yes. What do you think that means?"
"Joe said they've discovered that actions downwhen alter the future. That's why they banned time travel—they're afraid of changing their own present. I think they're in a touchy situation. They know what they do to us will affect them."
"How?"
"History will be different if we don't return to our own time," said Rick.
"So they have to take us back. Then why haven't they?"
"Because history will be different if we do return to our own time."
"Now you're not making sense."
"Their problem is figuring out which course of action their present is based on."
"I get it!" said Con. "That's why they asked all those ques-tions about public records."
"I think Hitler and Stalin are off doing research, and Jane's minding the cages."
"And she let the animals out," said Con with bitter humor.
"Jane Goodall came to care for the chimps she studied," said Rick. "She became their advocate." Con sighed. "I doubt this Jane will ever care for us."
38
CON AND RICK CUDDLED AND TALKED FOR A BLISSFUL
hour before the barrier between the columns vanished. Jane was standing outside in the snow. She carried the weapon in her hand, but she did not aim it. Looking at Con, she said, "It is time for you to return to your room."
Con pointed to the weapon. "That's not necessary," she said. "I'll go." Con gave Rick a parting kiss, then rose with a heavy heart. Attempting to play the model prisoner, she walked quickly back to her quarters. Once she passed between the stone col-umns, she turned to face Jane. "Thank you," she said. "It meant a lot to me to see him." Jane said something in her own language, and the barrier formed between them.
Con was left staring at the opalescent colors that separated her from Rick. Seeing Rick made his absence all the more painful. Her recent joy only deepened her current sorrow. She threw herself down on the bed and sobbed.
When she had cried herself out, she began to brood about the future. There seemed to be two possibilities. One was blissful—she and Rick would return to their own time to continue their lives together. The other was bleak. They'll dispose of us. When Con tried to decide which was most likely, her heart sank. They must do what they've done be-fore. It was very confusing, but the worst part was that she couldn't imagine that these people had ever sent them back. Still, she reasoned, there was one version of time where they built this observatory. Perhaps, there are infinite variations of the future. That idea was little help. Which variation am I in? Her prospects did not look good. I'm in the one where our captors are nicknamed Hitler and Stalin.
Con told the room lights to dim and went to bed. Sleep did not come easily. She lay awake envisioning Hitler and Stalin entering the room with weapons drawn to put her down like a stray dog in a pound. When she eventually dozed off, her fears brought forth vivid nightmares.
Con awoke in a sweat, thinking she held Rick's bloody corpse. The dim light of day filtered through the swirling colors. A new food cube lay at the foot of the bed. The fact that Jane had simply left the cube seemed ominous to Con. The troubled night had fed her sense of dread, and, as the day wore on, Con became increasingly apprehensive. She began to see her visit with Rick as a sign that the end was near, the equivalent of a condemned prisoner's last meal. Jane's statement that her coworkers had "the information we require" took on sinister implications. They're done with me, Con realized. Now it's all a matter of waiting.
Yet passively submitting to her fate went against the core of Con's being. As she paced her prison in restless agitation, she formed a desperate plan. She resolved to breach the col-ored barrier. She reasoned that if she ran and jumped, her momentum would carry her through the field regardless of how her body responded to the pain. / endured it once, she told herself. When I recover this time, I'll be on the other side, free to find a way to Rick. Still, the memory of her previous agony held her back. It took another anxious and lonely hour before her desperation overcame her apprehen-sion. Finally, as the light outside faded, Con screwed up her courage. After several false starts, she made a running leap and curled into a ball as her body passed through the livid colors.